Charlie Hunnam's 'Lost City of Z' Diet: 400 Calories a Day

Charlie Hunnam enjoyed his experience in the jungles of Colombia shooting the new action-drama, The Lost City of Z. “I loved it. It’s one of the great parts of being an actor and working in the film industry,” he told Yahoo Movies at the ‘Z’ Los Angeles press day (watch our chat above). “You get to go and spend extended periods of time in environments most of us don’t get to experience in our lives.”

But he’ll preface that by mentioning that, yes, there were plenty of challenges and hardships. Like the fact that to play early 20th century British explorer Percy Fawcett, who thrice ventured to Amazonia in search of an ancient indigenous city, he had to lose some 35 pounds.

“We were starving, and it was incredibly humid and hot, so we didn’t have to imagine too much of the hardship those guys were enduring,” said Hunnam (Pacific Rim), who noted he only consumed between 400-500 calories a day (roughly one Double Cheeseburger from McDonald’s). But he had some company in his misery, notably costars Robert Pattinson (Twilight) and Edward Ashley (In the Heart of the Sea).

“On the last film that I did (a remake of the 1973 prison escape drama Papillon), I just had to lose a lot of weight again, and that was by myself,” Hunnam said. “I really missed the camaraderie of losing it with the guys.

“There was a sense that we were in it together. But then also on the underside of it, a little bit of competition… [We’d] be very suspicious of each other. When Robert would be going off and walking away, I’d have a tendency to be watching him wherever he went just to see if he was like, going off into the jungle to smuggle a quick banana or something. So we kept each other honest.”